Brevity June 29, 2007

Ah the succinct genius of the text message. The following were found saved in my phone:

Woo-hoo! Let’s go get tattooed!

Three piles of shit last night.

Beer?

He took his shirt off.

I’m in Kent! (NOTE: Anyone who’s been to Kent will understand that this one is only funny because of the exclamation point.)

Stupid rich people with all their money.

They think they found Jody Huisentruit’s body!

I lost my virginity 5 years ago today.

Beers bong and cake!

Totally had sex last night.

1. I made myself puke last night. 2. I am terribly hung over. 3. How bad is it that we have your coworkers purse?

The French: Cruelly Accurate June 28, 2007

The French word for single person is ‘celibataire’.

Suddenly the national proclivity for wine makes a little more sense.

Some thoughts, Unrelated and Perhaps Uninteresting June 26, 2007

• They do have cheese in Cameroon. Laughing Cow cheese, which apparently has a half-life similar to carbon. Ironically, I currently only buy Laughing Cow cheese when it’s on sale or I’m feeling especially Rockefelleresque.
• I came across a blog yesterday where someone listed their weird celebrity crushes. It got me thinking about how attractive I think Ed Harris is. Also it’s possible I would marry Billy Crystal given the right formula of beer and opportunity.
• My obsession with all things Jenny Lewis is unwavering though. I have a lot of love to give.
• There are 63 days left until I quit my job, and 85 until I leave the country.
• I watched Coal Miners Daughter for the first time the other night. Did you know Sissy Spasek does all the singing herself? And that she actually started out her career as a country singer called ‘Rainbo’? Me either.
• Did you know you can’t drink in Seattle parks? Alcohol, I mean. Also I believe the city has passed a moratorium on both fun and games.
• Winston Churchill ate a piece of yarn of unknown length last night. I caught him just as he sucked up the last bit like a piece of periwinkle spaghetti. I’m assuming that’s not good. Or maybe he’s just started a long term project to fancy up his litter box.
• In other food news, have you ever heard of these? Me either. I’m going to do my best to eat one, though.
• Lives are changing all around me—my own included. I always thought my early 20s would be my most volatile years. Sometimes it’s great to be wrong.

And I always thought frogs legs would be more like an appetizer. June 21, 2007

Y’all, I’m sorry for my lack of presence of late. I suppose I feel a mite overwhelmed, and also I have a limited amount of internet time each day combined with an obsession for googling the word ‘Cameroon’ + any other word I can think of…for example ‘Cameroon beach‘, ‘Cameroon demographics‘, ‘Cameroon Peace Corps Boy‘, (I know, I KNOW—and no, I didn’t join the PC to meet men, but I couldn’t help myself and to be fair I also googled ‘Cameroon Peace Corps Girl‘, which interestingly enough brought up almost exactly the same pictures), ‘Cameroon landscape‘ and ‘Cameroon food‘. As regards that last search, may I direct you to this image in particular? Wow. Who wants to visit!?!?

So, I’ve been researching and researching and alternately freaking myself out and getting terribly excited, AND I’ve been writing my ‘Aspiration Statement’ AND re-writing my resume, as per the Peace Corps request. Oh AND filling out Visa applications and a ‘no-fee passport’ application. All of which basically means I’ve written my name and address down about 20 times but each time it was the most stressful thing ever. You know how every once in a while in the course of existence you’re writing something dumb like your name or you phone number and somehow you write it wrong? Or is it just me? It doesn’t happen A LOT…I’m just saying…sometimes it’s like my brain checks out and I realize that I left out an ‘e’ or something (there are a lot of e’s in my name) and anyway every time I would go to fill out one of these EXTREMELY important forms I was afraid that this would be the moment.

Long story short—or, you know, shorter—I made it through just fine, dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s so to speak, but boy howdy did it take it out of me.

So if you will excuse me I need to get down to the important business of googling ‘Cameroon cheese’. I need to know what I’m getting into.

I’m Going to Cameroon! June 18, 2007

So much to say and so much research to do, but thus far here is my favorite spot of Cameroonian Trivia:

There are 47 airports in the country, and 11 have paved runways!

It’s sort of like a metaphor for life.

Also, my second favorite part of Cameroonian Trivia is the word Cameroonian.

On the edge of knowing June 15, 2007

It’s a strange thing to actively count down the hours until your life will change. I’ve been trying to think of another example in my life where I’ve gone through something similar. And I can’t. I mean, I pretty much knew that I was going to get into the University of Oregon, and I certainly knew where it was. It was the same with my study abroad trip to Italy—once I heard that I had been accepted, they mystery was over.

But this! This is a fish of a different color! It is very strange to finally, after nearly a year, receive word that you have been accepted to a program that will radically change your life, but to still have to wait four more days to find out the details of those radical changes. But would you like to know a secret? As hard as this waiting is…I also kind of like it. In a weird way I’m sort of enjoying these last days of ignorance, and I really dig the idea that there will be a package waiting for me when I leave work today. (Oh PLEASE let there be a package waiting for me when I get home today. All this crap I’m spewing about ignorance and bliss and shit only applies if said ignorance ends TODAY.)

I’m sure the Peace Corps could change the process so that each volunteer is told on the phone both that they’ve been officially invited and specifically where they’ve been invited to. But there is just something so great about walking to your mail box and opening it up and pulling out a letter that will, without a doubt, affect the trajectory of your life. The physicality of it makes the moment so much better than if you were just hearing from a voice on the phone. One second you are living your life and the future is just out there, safely in the distance. And in the next, with one swift tear of paper…the path will be set. The future is no longer distant—it’s in your hands.

This is perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, and in spite of the toll its taking on my stomach lining I’m so glad to be able to relish it just a little bit. How often do you get to actively experience a day you know you will remember forever? And that will definitely have a surprise ending? The only thing I can think of that is comparable is the day I give birth, but since that requires, you know, “interactions” with a male, we’ll have to leave that experience on the back burner for a while.

So yeah. This is a big day for me. I know that someday having a family will trump all of this (or at least relegate it to a different category of greatness), but I have to say that right now, today, I am so happy and excited and fulfilled by the fact that I DID THIS. FOR ME. At this moment, standing of the edge of my new life, I am so thankful for the decision I made and so ready to take everything on and I just had to record that sentiment, so that later, when this is real and hard and even eventually over I will have proof that for at least a day it was the best experience of my life.